


Playing House

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4338119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lone Wanderer asks Butch for help with a sensitive issue. No explicit sex, but several fucked-up personal relationships are in evidence. F!LW/Charon is referenced as dub-con.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing House

Five years since Vault 101 opened, and Butch Deloria hadn’t found his way out of Rivet City. He got a job tending the bar in the Muddy Rudder. Belle paid him in drinks and let him sleep on a mattress under the bar, and sometimes, in her bed.

He hadn’t seen Liz since Sarah Lyons died, and that was fine by him. He heard she’d settled down in Megaton with Charon, turned into something of a recluse. Butch still wasn’t quite comfortable with the image of a human girl with a ghoul, didn’t think he ever would be.

He wasn’t expecting her to turn up again, not after five years, but Liz was full of surprises.

He almost didn’t recognize her when she walked through the saloon’s doors and took a seat at the far end of the bar. She’d lost a lot of weight, looked like a bag of sticks tied together with yellow ribbon. Her sallow skin was stretched tight across her skull, and her chemically straightened hair hung in front of her dark eyes like a greasy curtain. She seemed to suck the air from the room.

“Hey Lizard,” Butch said, “You still shackin’ up with the zombie?” He laughed stupidly at his own joke, trying desperately to lighten the mood.

“Don’t call him a zombie, Butch.” Liz said.

“He looks like something outta Grognak.”

“Shut up, Butch. You’re no prize.” Exhaustion overtook spite, and she lapsed into silence.

He pulled a battered pack of cigarettes out of his dirty jacket and shook one out with a practised flick of the wrist. “Whatever, Lizard. What do you want?”

“What makes you think I want something?”

“You hate me,” he said plainly, sticking the cigarette between his teeth. “You wouldn’t come all the way ass out here if you didn’t need something.” He offered the pack to Liz, and she accepted.

“I don’t hate you, Butch.” She found a matchbook in her pants pocket. The smell of stale tobacco diffused slowly, covering up some of the bar’s ammonia stink.

He snorted. “You’re a shit liar.”

She’d smoked half a cigarette before she worked up a response. “It’s Charon,” she said finally.

“You finally decide to come back to the land of the living?”

“No, nothing like that.” She blew a misshapen smoke ring. “I need a baby.”

Butch looked at her sideways.

“He’s not happy, Butch. A baby would give him something to... focus on.”

“He’ll know it ain’t his.”

She shrugged. “It’s not impossible. You’re dumb, but I know you’ve heard of St. Monica. That priest is in here three days a week, preaching temperance.”

“What do you care if he’s happy or not? He can’t leave you, anyway.”

“That’s low.”

“It’s not like he loves you.”

She didn’t respond for a long while.

“You going to do it or not?” she said, crushing the remainder of her cigarette out on the countertop. The burn was scarcely noticeable on the scarred surface.

He thought it over another minute, looking up into the bar’s filmy fluorescent lights for guidance. “I guess,” he said, finally. “Hell if I know why.”

She smiled, revealing a mouth of crooked, yellow teeth, then leaned across the bar and kissed him on the cheek. “Think of it like playing house,” she whispered. “I’m the mommy and you’re the daddy.”


End file.
